Academic calendar is based on the turns of the Academy around the Earth.

Academic calendar is based on the turns of the Academy around the Earth.
100316
(This is a free translation of the Turkish version )

Social scientists do not read books, they make readings. When they take a book or an article, they do not try to find answers to certain problems, they just try to analyse the arguments of the author and compare them with the other thinkers' views. Hence, they do not learn “something” by reading, they learn “a person's opinions”.

Philosophers see no connection between their views on ontology and the teacup in the canteen. Sociologist see categories of humans instead of humans.

Mathematicians do not see the universe or a part of it when they read an article or a book, they just see some calculations.

The Academy is not interested in the real world. Thinking about the real world is off-topic; to get an idea about the real world from what one has learned, is, Zeus forbid, immoral.

Every discipline has a certain level of abstraction, therefore one should not go anywhere outside this abstraction.

The mathematician considers it being weak to talk “about” mathematics. Sociologist labels your critic to sociology as modernistic etc. Psychologist does not even consider it as an option that you might approach to psychology somehow critically.

The Academy is the place where chemistry, history, literature, physics, sociology, genetics, architecture, medicine, politics, mathematics, biology and many other disciplines are separated in a proper way. In the Academy, there cannot be any politics of mathematics, as there cannot exist any philosopher who knows physics.

The Academy is the Academy and, as a logical consequence of this statement, the Academy is not life. The Academy is not interested in the price of bus tickets; therefore, people who are interested in the price of bus tickets have no place in the Academy. The Academy cannot tolerate the inferiority of worrying about daily matters.

Global climate change does not interest the mathematician; because the mathematician devotes himself/herself to solving the differential equations that underlie climate modellings. Even though this might be the best known way to “understand” global climate change; understanding it better does not imply stopping it.

The Academy is the place where a social problem is “studied” by different perspectives. On the other hand, the Academy is the place where this social problem can be studied only. Once the issue is sufficiently understood, the duty of the academic is over.

The Academy questions everything other than its own activity of questioning.

Universe is a whole, the Academy declares autonomy in the universe. The humanity exists in a historical context; the Academy keeps itself out of the historicity. Scientific knowledge is too unreachable to be considered as part of history. Working on mathematics requires not working on anything else; because the scientist is devoted herself/himself so much to science that she/he cannot bother about humanity. The physicist never reads a newspaper or philosophy. The historian has no idea about Maxwell equations, evolution, or climate change. The universe is a whole, science decomposes. The humanity is a whole, but it does not look at itself holistically. Bad things happen in the world; the academics are the ones who know this fact “best”, but “understand” it worst.

1 comment:

gogo said...

hehe aylar sonra bu yazıya yapılacak yorumu buldum!

http://beklemesalonu.blogspot.com/2010/11/reading-with-clarice-lispector.html